At some point he will likey soften his personal comments in line with the public ones like on the call. I think his intentions are good.

There might be value in not picking on your potential Big Pharma customers if you want to supply boosters etc to their vaccine.

Also, who knows you might need a partner other than Merck/Siopharm as well.

If he gets the test results he expects soon, those results will be able to do most of the convincing on their own.